More Black Belt Stitching Wizard Stuff

Saturday, December 31, 2011

Today is the final PhotoHunt for 2011, which means a new set of themes for next year! Yay! Today's theme is "Gather"

I took this picture back in September, not far from my place there's a cement company. These towers/silos contain the various components that make up cement, the trucks pull up underneath and the cement is loaded into the truck. Did you know that a cement truck has 90 minutes to deliver its load before it starts to harden? Anyhow, I don't know why but on this day the birds decided to gather on these two towers, it was almost like a scene out of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.

Friday, December 30, 2011

Well my body did hang in until just after Christmas and earlier this week I woke up with a sore throat, I've been sick ever since. Today is day 4 of being sick! Yesterday we did go out and have lunch with Christin and do a little post-Christmas shopping... if you ask me there weren't a lot of great deals out there. I don't know if that's just a sign of the times or the fact that we didn't hit the stores until Thursday when Boxing Day sales started on Monday. Going out yesterday just did me in! Lunch and 4 shops later and I was exhausted!

Since I've kept a low profile while on my Christmas Break (yay sick!) I have been stitching away when I haven't been sleeping. I did finally finish the over one back stitch on Enchantment of Winter and I've proceeded to the right hand side of the Egg. Still lots to go!

I don't know why my pictures came out so blue, its not really *that* blue, the full picture is more of a true sense of the colours of this piece.

Before I've let myself pick up EOW I've been completing 10x10 on my BAP, The Accolade. Right now the page I'm working on is mainly 3371, talk about exciting! Actually after working on the golds in EOW there's something therapeutic about working with one colour and its only for a short while each day so its not really driving me that batty... yet.

I hope you stitchers out there are ready for the start of 2012! I know there are ort jars to be emptied, SALs to start! There are challenges out there like the Crazy Challenge (see previous post) or WIPocalypse 2012! Hopefully its enough to keep everyone motivated, stitching and blogging the whole year through.

I was looking forward to starting Ink Circles Four Seasons Mandalas in person with Rebbecca at midnight on the 1st of January. However, between this cold and the weather man calling for freezing rain, we've cancelled this year's road trip down to Kingston! This is the first time in about 4 years we haven't gotten together on New Year's even to stitch the New Year in. Of course I also don't want to get her or her little boys sick!

So the Treadmill Saga continues : the part needed to fix the broke foot wouldn't be in stock until January 31st 2012 so they have finally agreed to order us a brand spanking new treadmill. That should be arriving sometime on/after January 4th, that will be a full month after we paid for the damned thing! This one will be delivered (again) free of cost and they're taking the assembled one away.

On Christmas Eve we went out and bought a new washing machine, as I type the delivery guy is pulling into our driveway! Yay! We're actually going to be getting a brand new one off of the floor because the new one that would of come from the warehouse didn't arrive on time because they got snowed in earlier in the week and deliveries couldn't go out. The price had also dropped on the washer on Boxing Day and was going to be in effect until the 27th. Since we knew the store was closed on Monday Todd made the trip out on Tuesday to get our price adjustment... turns out they decided to be closed for an extra day! What the heck!!! So I called the national customer service center and a cheque is now in the mail to us, a savings of $169.00. I feel like every major purchase we've made lately has gone sideways. Hopefully this purchase won't give us any problems once its in and installed!

I'm going to leave you with some adorable pictures of Hunter, he was enjoying a lovely patch of sunshine yesterday!

Monday, December 26, 2011

January first is almost here and that means several things! The biggest question of course is what am I going
to stitch in 2012?

Unless some miracle happens I'll be still working on Enchantment of Winter. The original plan had been to finish this piece to have it framed for my Dad's 70th birthday in November.

I'll also still be poking away at the Accolade as I was only semi-successful with stitching a 10x10 block on it whenever I went to pick up my stitching.
As for new starts oh boy there's going to be a start-a-palooza at this house! After watching last years Crazy Challenge I decided I wanted to give it a go this January. This means I get to start one new project for the first fifteen days of January, the idea is also to finish all 15 by the end of the year. The starts should be doable since I'm not back to work until the 9th. As for the finishing, a lot of the projects are small so I should be able to finish most of them but the last project on the below list I know I won't be able to finish. I've just had it kitted up for over a year now and just want to start it!
So what are my fifteen starts you may ask?

Sunday, December 25, 2011

I wanted to take today as a chance to say a very Merry Christmas to all my blog readers out there! Thank you so much for being a part of my life! I've enjoyed sharing snippets of my life, my passions with you. I cherish each and every comment that has been left. Also I have made some amazing friends through this blog, some I have been fortunate enough to meet in person some I hope to meet some day!

I hope friends and family have made this holiday season a happy one for you!

We didn't quite get into the full swing of the holiday spirit here this year. The tree didn't go up, but we celebrated with my family on Christmas Eve and Todd's family Christmas Day.

Since I don't have pictures of my tree for you this year I have some pictures of the cats sharing the spirit of the season!

Saturday, December 24, 2011

As this year is wrapping up I'm hitting a lot of the "lasts" for the year. Today's post is the last TUSAL for 2011 and I managed to make every new moon for this year! My ort jar started the year empty and is almost full, quite an accomplishment considering the size of the vase I use for my orts. Thank you very much to Sharon, AKA Daffycat for hosting the SAL this year and she'll be hosting it again next year, I'm already signed up are you?

I'm not at my last PhotoHunt for this year yet, still one more week to go in the month/year! This week's theme is Surprise! Imagine my surprise when I was at Bluesfest this year rocking it out to Billy Talent (one of my fav. Canadian bands!) when I saw this guy crowd surfing. Now that's nothing new or surprising at a concert... its the fact that if you look closely... he's in a wheelchair! What a guy! I thought I had seen it all at rock concerts!

Friday, December 23, 2011

Its been a busy week! There hasn't been much time for stitching, and when I've had some time in the evenings I keep finding myself falling asleep. So my stitching time has turned into sleepy time lately! The end of the week is here, I made it! I am now off of work and don't go back until January 9th! So once the sillyness of Christmas is over (24th and 25th for us) its feet up and stitching out for me!

In between bouts of work and sleep I did manage to finish another one of Daffycat's adorable Reindeer freebies! I love these and hope she gifts us with more!

I have been poking away at the over one backstitch on Enchantment of Winter, but that's just it poking away. Boy this is taking forever!

--Non Stitchy Stuff--

So the treadmill saga continues and this girl is still not running and is starting to get nasty over it all (did I mention I'm feeling a little gross and bloated lately?). I feel like all the running I had been doing since October has just been thrown away and I feel things going flabby instead of firming up!

Here's the timeline for my saga :

December 3rd we went to a well known department store hoping to buy a treadmill and take it home with us that day. It turns out they don't keep them in stock you have to order it. They offered to have it sent to a catalogue pickup depot if we wanted and we picked that option because it was closer to home with us. We would have our new treadmill in 7-10 days. Okay that was acceptable.

December 13th, still no call to pick up our treadmill. After constantly getting a busy line at the catalogue pickup I called the department store we ordered it from. We were informed that it had been delivered on December 10th. Now I was confused, why hadn't we been called? So I called the pick up location and finally got a person! After some confusion it turns out they had sent our treadmill BACK as soon as it arrived. They had been told by orders that a treadmill was to be returned, but the weren't told which order because ours was a purchase and the other one was a gift for pick up they assumed ours was the one to be returned. So I had to call the department store where we made the purchase back. Had them order a new one, we had to be charged a second time and that the first charge would be refunded (still waiting on that). We were offered free home delivery, and the price had dropped on the treadmill so we were saving more money. I was okay with this.

December 21st the treadmill was delivered, I had to have my Mum hang out at my house to accept the delivery.

Today, December 23rd Todd has the time to finish assembling the treadmill. Turns out one of the feet is broken! The customer service rep I had been dealing with at the department store is now off until the 27th. I called service and I'm told a technician has to come out to our house to fix it. I am not happy anymore. I've called customer service to complain telling them we should be receiving some sort of compensation for this. We made our purchase on December 3rd, they've had our money since then (well twice at the moment) and we still cannot use our purchase... and if it can't be fixed on the 27th ... who knows when? Actually if the tech can't fix it then and there, he can take it back and they can refund us both charges! Despite lodging my complaint with Customer Service at the 1-888 number I will be calling the fellow at the department store as well on Tuesday. This whole situation has been unacceptable... I don't understand why they have to send out someone to fix the product we received from the store/warehouse broken. We didn't break it, we should just get a new one.

Sunday, December 18, 2011

It was the International Hermit and Stitch Weekend, and this month I had the time and luxury to be able to take part! I've been so busy all I've been wanting was a weekend to stay home and stitch! I did some finishing (see yesterday's blog entry) and I stitched!

I stitched up this fantastic freebie I had a wee start on it before I got up from my nap after work on Friday but I worked on it that night, quite a bit on Saturday and wrapped it up today. I really enjoyed this stitch, and of course if you don't know me by now, I love to switch up the colours! This was charted up for red floss on white fabric I of course did the opposite! Unfortunately this isn't the best picture, I didn't realize the whites had blown out until I got it on the computer and honestly I'm too busy watching the Survivor Finale to get up and re-take a picture! I'll have a better picture when I do the finishing of this pretty.

I also pulled Enchantment of Winter back out. For some reason lately I've been avoiding working on this piece, despite the fact that it needs to get finished! I think I just don't want to face all that over one backstitching, which I was very good to do today until it drove me buggy! When I switched back to stitching over two without my magnifier my eyes were immediately much happier! Of course this picture just doesn't show what progress I've made.

-- Non-Stitchy Stuff --

Well there's still no new treadmill though we ordered a new one on December 3rd. This order kinda turned into a comedy of errors. Actually its not a comedy of errors, but just a bad case of STUPID PEOPLE! They were told to send one back they had two arrive. One had been ordered as a gift and ours. They had been told by the warehouse to return a treadmill, but they didn't think to find out which one. Since gifts NEVER have to go back they sent ours back before it barely arrived... never thinking to maybe CALL us to confirm we wanted it returned, since they had all our information to do that so we could come pick it up. The long and the short of it is, our treadmill has been re-ordered, its now on sale so we got a further discount, and its being delivered to the house for free. I hate STUPID PEOPLE!!!! You can ask Chrsitin I go on about stupid people a lot, a pet peeve of mine. I've not run in almost a month because its winter-like out there, and because of STUPID PEOPLE!

A wee self portrait, see that on the ground? Yup evil, white stuff!

There's actually another reason why I'm going on about my treadmill. My weight loss efforts are seriously suffering, its like I lost my safety blanket not being able to run on my schedule and my terms (I live in the country which is great for good weather running, but not great for winter running and its dark before 5PM right now and I mean dark!). Today I bundled up and went out and walked my run route. I went out for a brisk walk, with no distractions, no music to move me along (which I always run with). It was very, very nice. Part way through I realized, oh my gosh I actually MISS running? Me, the short fat girl (well still short and a little fatter than I'd like to be at the moment but not as fat as I used to be) missing running? The only time you would of caught me running in the past was out of a burning house with two cats under my arms and my stitching bag! Despite the sub-zero temps I bundled up and it was very nice! I'll have to do that again.

So my regular readers know the treadmill is on order because mine broke at the tail end of November, well Murphy paid us another visit. A week away from Christmas to the day, our washing machine died today! The motor was smoking and all that. We have another big purchase coming this week, of all weeks.

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Its PhotoHunt Day! This week's theme is "Joy", that is so appropriate this time of year because the joy seems to get lost in all the buying, preparing, cleaning, and just being rude to each other in the stores and parking lots.

I think only children experience the true joy in which this season should bring us all! This photo was taken last weekend at our annual Taekwon-Do Family Christmas Brunch. Santa always seems to have a little time for a visit. This is my long-time friend Jason's little boy, Logan this is his first Christmas and he's all smiles!

I really wanted to be stitching today but I had more ornaments that needed to go through the ornaemntification process. Here's what I accomplished today. I've still got more to go, but with the next batch I'll be pulling out the sewing machine.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Wow what happened there?!? Life suddenly got very hectic, very busy and I've not even had time to myself lately! I've eaten out five days out of seven and its probably not helped my weight at all! I've not weighed in this week and I'm thinking of skipping it I'm exhausted! I've not done an iota of exercise either, the ordering of our new treadmill has turned into a circus and we still don't have it despite ordering it on December 3rd. The only time I got into Taekwon-Do this week was tonight to teach.

So like I've said not a lot of time, not a lot of me time and far too many late nights! What time I've managed to grab I've dedicated towards ornamentifying the JBW ornaments I stitched for the girls at work next week is our last week before the holidays and being off for two weeks.

Not only did I ornamentify but I received this charming fellow from Kathy in the mail on Tuesday! Before she left I asked her to do an ornament exchange with me. My ornament is now winging its way to Kathy, I sent it just this week... a little late. I'm such a procrastinator when it comes to mailing things! Thanks Kathy I love it!

Saturday, December 10, 2011

After years of the weekly PhotoHunt being hosted by TN Chick, it has found a new home! So if this is something you're interested in doing please check out the new blog here the themes for December and January 2012 are already up. Have you marked your calendar? I've marked mine!

The theme this week is "Lights"

I took this picture at the Timberhouse Bed and Breakfast I think it was either in January or March of this year. I was just trying to be "artistic"... it wasn't until I looked at the picture later on my computer that I realized what a cool effect I had managed to capture. There were about 6 vases with tall pillar candles in them all lit up and they all managed to reflect and multiply on the vase of this one candle. Isn't it just too cool?

Its been a busy week and not much stitching has happened! Maybe I'll have some stitchy-like things to share with you tomorrow???